Very simply put, eMarketing or electronic marketing refers to the application of marketing principles and techniques via electronic

media and more specifically the Internet. The terms eMarketing, Internet marketing and online marketing, are frequently interchanged, and can often be considered synonymous. eMarketing is the process of marketing a brand using the Internet. It includes both direct response marketing and indirect marketing elements and uses a range of technologies to help connect businesses to their customers. By such a definition, eMarketing encompasses all the activities a business conducts via the worldwide webwith the aim of attracting new business, retaining current business and developing its brand identity.

Why is it important?
When implemented correctly, the return on investment (ROI) from eMarketing can far exceed that of traditional marketing strategies. Whether you're a "bricks and mortar" business or a concern operating purely online, the Internet is a force that cannot be ignored. It can be a means to reach literally millions of people every year. It's at the forefront of a redefinition of way businesses interact with their customers.

The benefits of eMarketing over traditional marketing

Reach
The nature of the internet means businesses now have a truly global reach. While traditional media costs limit this kind of reach to huge multinationals, eMarketing opens up new avenues for smaller businesses, on a much smaller budget, to access potential consumers from all over the world.

Scope
Internet marketing allows the marketer to reach consumers in a wide range of ways and
enables them to offer a wide range of products and services. eMarketing includes, among other things, information management, public relations, customer service and sales. With the range of new technologies becoming available all the time, this scope can only grow.

Interactivity
Whereas traditional marketing is largely about getting a brand's message out there, eMarketing facilitates conversations between companies and consumers. With a two-way communication channel, companies can feed off of the responses of their consumers, making them more dynamic and adaptive.

Immediacy
Internet marketing is able to, in ways never before imagined, provide an immediate impact. Imagine you're reading your favourite magazine. You see a double-page advert for some new product or service, maybe BMW's latest luxury sedan or Apple's latest iPod offering. With this kind of traditional media, it's not that easy for you, the consumer, to take the step from hearing about a product to actual acquisition. With eMarketing, its easy to make that step as simple as possible, meaning that within a few short clicks you could have booked a test drive or ordered the iPod. And all of this can happen regardless of normal office hours. Effectively, Internet marketing makes business hours 24 hours per day, 7 days per week for every week of the year. By closing the gap between providing information and eliciting a consumer reaction, the consumer's buying cycle is speeded up and advertising spend can go much further in creating immediate leads.

Demographics and targeting

Generally speaking, the demographics of the Internet are a marketer's dream. Internet users, considered as a group, have greater buying power and could perhaps be considered as a population group skewed towards the middle-classes. Buying power is not all though. The nature of the Internet is such that its users will tend to organise themselves into far more focussed groupings. Savvy marketers who know where to look can quite easily findaccess to the niche markets they wish to target. Marketing messages are most effective when they are presented directly to the audience most likely to be interested. The Internet creates the perfect environment for niche marketing to targeted groups.

Adaptivity and closed loop marketing

Closed Loop Marketing requires the constant measurement and analysis of the results of marketing initiatives. By continuously tracking the response and effectiveness of a campaign, the marketer can be far more dynamic in adapting to consumers' wants and needs. With eMarketing, responses can be analysed in real-time and campaigns can be tweaked continuously. Combined with the immediacy of the Internet as a medium, this means that there's minimal advertising spend wasted on less than effective campaigns. Maximum marketing efficiency from eMarketing creates new opportunities to seize strategic competitive advantages.

E SECURITY

hile there are benefits associated with the widespread popularity of the Internet and ever-increasing growth rate of the computers being connected to it, there is a down side too. The task of protection of the data and information stored in the computers and travelling across the Internet has never been so challenging. Computer and Internet Security, therefore, has become a specialized area in itself. The internet provides great opportunities for business to reach new markets and more customers than ever before, but unfortunately, with those opportunities come some e-security risks. When online, unwanted intruders can:

Install malicious software such as spyware and viruses, which can steal sensitive business information as well as slow down your computer. Intercept financial transactions, steal credit card details and access customer information. Steal your download limit without your knowledge and at your cost. Take over your website and modify it. Steal sensitive business information from your business by using a portable device such as a USB.

eSecurity Computer and Internet Security Services is a modest effort to provide professional services to the Internet community, especially that of GNSE Group. We offer a broad array of services. GNSEs philosophy for e-Security is simple: identify what security threats challenge

organizations and provide the appropriate solutions for them. To this end, we have partnered with several multinational, specialized e-Security vendors to provide bestof-breed solutions to our clients. In addition, GNSE Group's e-Security staffs are fully certified in vendor-specific categories and vendor-neutral specializations (CISSP, CISM, CEH, etc.). Read more: http://www.gnsegroup.com/ProductsServices/WhatIsESecurity.aspx#ixzz1ssXOnjdf

E-PAYMENT

n e-commerce payment system facilitates the acceptance of electronic payment for online transactions. Also known as a sample of Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), e-commerce payment systems have become increasingly popular due to the widespread use of the internet-based shopping and banking. There are numerous different payments systems available for online merchants. These include the traditional credit, debit and charge card but also new technologies such as digital wallets, e-cash,mobile payment and e-checks. Another form of payment system is allowing a 3rd party to complete the online transaction for you. These companies are called Payment Service Providers (PSP).

SMART &CREDIT CARD

Over the years, credit cards have become one of the most common forms of payment for e-commerce transactions. In North America almost 90% of online B2C transactions were made with this payment type [1]. Turban et al. goes on to explain that it would be difficult for an online retailer to operate without supporting credit and debit cards due to their widespread use. Increased security measures include use of the card verification number (CVN) which detects fraud by comparing the verification number printed on the signature strip on the back of the card with the information on file with the cardholder's issuing bank [2]. Also online merchants have to comply with stringent rules stipulated by the credit and debit card issuers (Visa and MasterCard)[3] this means that merchants must have security protocol and procedures in place to ensure transactions are more

secure. This can also include having a certificate from an authorized certification authority (CA) who provides PKI infrastructure for securing credit and debit card transactions. Despite this widespread use in North America, there are still a large number of countries such as China, India and Pakistan that have some problems to overcome in regard to credit card security. In the meantime, the use of smartcards has become extremely popular. A Smartcard is similar to a credit card; however it contains an embedded 8-bit microprocessor and uses electronic cash which transfers from the consumers card to the sellers device. A popular smartcard initiative is the VISA Smartcard. Using the VISA Smartcard you can transfer electronic cash to your card from your bank account, and you can then use your card at various retailers and on the internet. There are companies that enable financial transactions to transpire over the internet, such as PayPal. Many of the mediaries permit consumers to establish an account quickly, and to transfer funds into their on-line accounts from a traditional bank account (typically via ACH transactions), and vice versa, after verification of the consumer's identity and authority to access such bank accounts. Also, the larger mediaries further allow transactions to and from credit card accounts, although such credit card transactions are usually assessed a fee (either to the recipient or the sender) to recoup the transaction fees charged to the mediary.

Electronic Bill Presentment and Payment

Electronic bill presentment and payment (EBPP) is a fairly new technique that allows consumers to view and pay bills electronically. There are a significant number of bills that consumers pay on a regular basis, which include: power bills, water, oil, internet, phone service, mortgages, car payments etc. EBPP systems send bills from service providers to individual consumers via the internet. The systems also enable payments to be made by consumers, given that the amount appearing on the e-bill is correct. The original EBPP method is a direct withdrawal from a bank account through a bank such as Scotiabank. Other service providers such as Rogers Communications and Aliant additionally, accept major credit cards within the bill payment sections of their websites. Telpay Incrporated offfers "Telpay for Business", a

software application that allows businesses to import electronically presented bills, pay them and store the presented image for audit purposes. The biggest difference between EBPP systems and the traditional method of bill payment, is that of technology. Rather than receiving a bill through the mail, writing out and sending a cheque, consumers receive their bills in an email, or are prompted to visit a website to view and pay their bills. Three broad models of EBPP have emerged. These are: 1. Consolidation, where numerous bills for any one recipient are made available at one Web site, most commonly the recipient's bank. In some countries, such as Australia, New Zealand and Canada, the postal service also operates a consolidation service. The actual task of consolidation is sometimes performed by a third party and fed to the Web sites where consumers receive the bills. The principal attraction of consolidation is that consumers can receive and pay numerous bills at the one location, thus minimizing the number of login IDs and passwords they must remember and maintain. 2. Biller Direct, where the bills produced by an organization are made available through that organization's Web site. This model works well if the recipient has reasons to visit the biller's Web site other than to receive their bills. In the freight industry, for example, customers will visit a carrier's Web site to track items in transit, so it is reasonably convenient to receive and pay freight bills at the same site. 3. Direct email delivery, where the bills are emailed to the customer's inbox. This model most closely imitates the analog postal service. It is convenient, because almost everyone has email and the customer has to do nothing except use email in order to receive a bill. Email delivery is proving especially popular in the B2B market in many countries

E-COMMERCE

Electronic commerce, commonly known as e-commerce or e-comm, refers to the buying and selling of products or services over electronic systems such as the Internet and other computer networks. Electronic commerce draws on such technologies as electronic funds transfer, supply chain management, Internet

marketing, online transaction processing, electronic data interchange(EDI), inventory management systems, and automated data collection systems. Modern electronic commerce typically uses the World Wide Web at least at one point in the transaction's life-cycle, although it may encompass a wider range of technologies such as e-mail, mobile devices and telephones as well.

Electronic commerce is generally considered to be the sales aspect of e-business. It also consists of the exchange of data to facilitate the financing and payment aspects of business transactions.

E-commerce can be divided into:

E-tailing or "virtual storefronts" on Web sites with online catalogs, sometimes gathered into a "virtual mall" The gathering and use of demographic data through Web contacts Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), the business-to-business exchange of data E-mail and fax and their use as media for reaching prospects and established customers (for example, with newsletters) Business-to-business buying and selling The security of business transactions

History
[edit]Early

development

Originally, electronic commerce was identified as the facilitation of commercial transactions electronically, using technology such as Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) and Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT). These were both introduced in the late 1970s, allowing businesses to send commercial documents like purchase orders or invoices electronically. The growth and acceptance of credit cards, automated teller machines (ATM) and telephone banking in the 1980s were also forms of electronic commerce. Another form of e-commerce was the airline reservation system typified by Sabre in the USA and Travicom in the UK. Beginning in the 1990s, electronic commerce would include enterprise resource planning systems (ERP), data mining and data warehousing

Governmental regulation
the United States, some electronic commerce activities are regulated by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). These activities include the use of commercial e-mails, online advertising and consumer privacy. The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 establishes national standards for direct marketing over e-mail. The Federal Trade Commission Act regulates all forms of advertising, including online advertising, and states that advertising must be truthful and non-deceptive.[15] Using its authority under Section 5 of the FTC Act, which prohibits unfair or deceptive practices, the FTC has brought a number of cases to enforce the promises in corporate privacy statements, including promises about the security of consumers personal information.[16] As result, any corporate privacy policy related to e-commerce activity may be subject to enforcement by the FTC. The Ryan Haight Online Pharmacy Consumer Protection Act of 2008, which came into law in 2008, amends the Controlled Substances Act to address online pharmacies.[17]

Global trends
Business models across the world also continue to change drastically with the advent of eCommerce and this change is not just restricted to USA. Other countries are also contributing to the growth of eCommerce. For example, the United Kingdom has the biggest e-commerce market in the world when measured by the amount spent per capita, even higher than the USA. The internet economy in UK is likely to grow by 10% between 2010 to 2015. This has led to changing dynamics for the advertising industry[23] Amongst emerging economies, China's eCommerce presence continues to expand. With 384 million internet users,China's online shopping sales rose to $36.6 billion in 2009 and one of the reasons behind the huge growth has been the improved trust level for shoppers. The Chinese retailers have been able to help consumers feel more comfortable shopping online.[24] eCommerce is also expanding across the Middle East. Having recorded the worlds fastest growth in internet usage between 2000 and 2009, the region is now home to more than 60 million internet users. Retail, travel and gaming are the regions top eCommerce segments, in spite of difficulties such as the lack of region-wide legal frameworks and logistical problems in cross-border

transportation.[25] E-Commerce has become an important tool for businesses worldwide not only to sell to customers but also to engage them.[26] [edit]Impact

on markets and retailers

Economists have theorized that e-commerce ought to lead to intensified price competition, as it increases consumers' ability to gather information about products and prices. Research by four economists at the University of Chicago has found that the growth of online shopping has also affected industry structure in two areas that have seen significant growth in e-commerce, bookshops andtravel agencies. Generally, larger firms have grown at the expense of smaller ones, as they are able to use economies of scale and offer lower prices. The lone exception to this pattern has been the very smallest category of bookseller, shops with between one and four employees, which appear to have withstood the trend.[27] [edit]Distribution

channels

E-commerce has grown in importance as companies have adopted Pure-Click and Brick and Click channel systems. We can distinguish between pure-click and brick and click channel system adopted by companies.

Pure-Click companies are those that have launched a website without any previous existence as a firm. It is imperative that such companies must set up and operate their e-commerce websites very carefully. Customer service is of paramount importance. Brick and Click companies are those existing companies that have added an online site for e-commerce. Initially, Brick and Click companies were skeptical whether or not to add an online e-commerce channel for fear that selling their products might produce channel conflict with their off-line retailers, agents, or their own stores. However, they eventually added internet to their distribution channel portfolio after seeing how much business their online competitors were generating.

E-FINANE

E-Finance

As an extreme simplification, E-Finance is about web-enabling everything that the finance function does - staff expense claims, sales orders, invoice payments, financial information all available using web technology. However, if its true benefits are to be realized, EFinance goes much beyond just putting a web front end to everything. It is about changing fundamentally the value proposition of the finance function by redefining its core activities, changing the interaction mechanism between itself and its prime customers, and moving it up the value chain by creating and assisting others in the organization to create better value for shareholders. Enabling technology plays a key part in making the transition to EFinance, and as we shall see later, it is THE means to the end. An E-Finance transformation sees finance change its role from transaction processing to true business partnering, with far reaching implications on interactivity with external customers, suppliers and also others within the organization. E-finance is defined as "The provision of financial services and markets using electronic communication and computation". In this paper we outline research issues related to efinance that we believe set the stage for further work in this field. Three areas are focused on. These are the use of electronic payments systems, the operations of financial services firms and the operation of financial markets